


Firebrand

by MirrorMystic



Series: Among Eagles [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Gen, Rebellion, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2019-09-19 12:30:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17001705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: An assassin and an angel, meeting across the lines of war.A tale from the Corinth Resistance, in the days before the Sparrow flew.





	Firebrand

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this years ago, and thought it could use a little touching up. Have a look at another side of the world of Among Eagles, a tale from the war-torn world of Corinth, occupied by daemons, and the brave few who rose to defend it. Enjoy!

~*~  
  
Where were you on the day Corinth fell?   
  
For the witnesses of that atrocity, it is not a thing they will soon forget. On that day, a rift tore itself open in the skies over Corinth, and a fleet of ghost ships spilled through. Ragged and smoking, lit from within by a volcanic red light… they bore no marks of allegiance, and flew no flag, but there was no mistaking their intent.   
  
Corinth was an agri-world. Its primary export was grain. It had no fleet, no orbital array, no strategic importance.   
  
Save for a middling garrison of PDF troopers, serving as law enforcement in peacetime, Corinth had scarcely any defenses at all.   
  
Corinth burned.   
  
In a matter of hours, this humble farming community became a vision of hell. And it remained so, for the entirety of the Enemy occupation, for over six hundred Days of Pain, waiting for the day that liberation came.  
  
Three weeks into the invasion, and formal opposition to the Enemy has ceased. The bulk of Corinth’s defenders are dead or forced into hiding. Now, the people of Corinth are being gathered together for processing, herded into trains like cattle to receive a ministry they will never forget.   
  
On this day, Aranea Stillwind, servant of Malice, has a choice to make.   
  
She is overseeing the congregation in the sleepy hamlet of Hawk’s Landing, transformed into a warzone. It is the twenty-second Day of Pain…  
  
~*~  
  
The sky is thick with smoke, only partly obscuring the acid yellow light of the Rift, blooming in the sky like a second sun. Alatar Rayk, Bloodletter, takes a deep, satisfied breath. It is a beautiful day, in the world they have won.   
  
Rayk’s group was a ragged bunch, dressed in frayed robes and leather harnesses. They didn’t look or carry themselves like soldiers. They were cult fighters only, a rabble of zealots with stolen guns and fire in their veins.   
  
Against what pitiful pockets of resistance that remained, the rabble was more than enough.   
  
But it never hurt to be prepared. That’s why the Overseer was skulking around in the shadows nearby, only a shout away. That’s why he had the ritual athame, a knife of carved obsidian, strapped to his belt. But then, that was only for real emergencies.   
  
A cult fighter fell in step beside him, a scowl creasing his lips. Rayk acknowledged him with a nod, though the other man was a full head taller than him.   
  
“Bloodletter,” the giant grunted.   
  
“Tarik,” Rayk replied.   
  
Tarik shifted the weight of the heavy cannon in the crook of his arm. It was a trophy, ripped off a PDF tripod. Hoppers of ammunition hung from his belt and knocked against his thigh as he walked.   
  
Ahead of them, a pair of civilians was being pulled out of their home. Two cult fighters held them at knife-point while a third bound their hands in cord.   
  
Two more for the Ministry.   
  
Tarik made a sound, half-sigh, half-scoff.   
  
“Bored, Tarik?” Rayk asked.   
  
Tarik merely grunted in reply.   
  
“You know our Mission, Tarik,” Rayk continued. “The Apostle needs new blood. We are here to bring him neophytes, and to kill anyone who resists.”  
  
“I think I’d rather just get to killing,” Tarik replied.   
  
A cult fighter stepped out of a house and approached them. Rayk couldn’t be bothered to remember his name. Behind him, two men, their hands bound, were being dragged down the porch steps.   
  
“Bloodletter,” he said, bowing. “Two more for the Ministry.”  
  
“Fine,” Rayk said, waving his hand dismissively. The brass rings on his fingers glinted in the Rift’s acidic light. “Bring them to the train station for processing.”  
  
The cult fighter did not respond. He blinked, staring dumbly at Rayk.   
  
Smoke rose from a hole in his chest.   
  
He dropped. Two more cracks of lasfire, two more cultists hitting the ground, felled by precision shots. Rayk watched them fall, scowling.   
  
Tarik threw his lumbering bulk into cover, hefting his heavy cannon, searching for the shooter. Rayk stayed where he was, right in the open.   
  
“Bloodletter!” Tarik cried.   
  
Rayk said nothing. He waited, and watched. Arcane power bubbled at his fingertips, his hand glowing with a frothing violet light.   
  
The shot came, right between Rayk’s eyes. It flashed off his barrier and showed him his target. He thrust his hand forward.   
  
A rooftop exploded in hellish violet flame.   
  
The shooting stopped.   
  
“Hubris,” Rayk spat, as his troops warily poked their heads out of cover. He glanced at his three fallen fighters, hearts smouldering. His eyes were filled with scorn.   
  
“Meaningless defiance,” Rayk said. He kicked the limp boot of a fallen cultist. “Our forces are without limit. There will always be more…”  
  
Rayk stopped, glancing around at his force. They had risen out of cover, joining him in the street, while their captives had dropped flat, pulling themselves out of the line of fire.   
  
_Hubris_ , Rayk realized, as the real shooting began.   
  
A dozen men fell around him in a span of four seconds, mowed down by the unmistakable crimson light of lasfire. Rayk stood in the street, astonished by his own arrogance, his own costly mistake, laser bolts crackling off his personal shield, slowly taxing it to capacity.   
  
Tarik’s meaty fist closed around Rayk’s arm like a vice and threw him down behind a flight of steps. Rayk winced as lasbolts cracked against their cover, blasting off chips of stone and dust. Despite all this, Tarik smiled, hefting his heavy weapon. The autocannon roared as it returned fire.   
  
The street became a blizzard of hard rounds and bright red lasbolts, most of the former coming down from above. The enemy had the high ground.   
  
A golden plasma beam speared down the concourse and raked itself across a trio of cult fighters, annihilating their flimsy cover and reducing them to ash in an instant. Rayk watched as one of his troops, calling out to him for instruction, lost his head in a blaze of golden light.   
  
Darkness whispered to him, prickling his intuition. Rayk rose, drawing the ritual athame just as a pair of enemy troopers rounded the corner behind him.   
  
He plunged the dagger into the first trooper’s throat, hurling him to the ground. The second raised his rifle a fraction of a second too slow. Rayk opened his hand and speared him with black lightning. He lifted the trooper’s convulsing body off the ground for a moment, before throwing him, his broken body crushing a wooden fence to kindling as it fell.   
  
Rayk turned his attention to the trooper dying before him, clutching feebly at the obsidian shard transfixing his throat. Blood coated the blade, giving it an unearthly sheen. Blood had power. So did words.   
  
“Embrace the long dark,” Rayk intoned. The trooper’s body rattled and writhed beneath him, pinned in place by the ritual knife. When Rayk plucked the athame out of the body, it rose, its flesh pale and lifeless, ghost lights in its eyes.   
  
Rayk snarled a word in the Old Tongue. His ghoul shambled back into the fight, turning his lasrifle against his former comrades.   
  
Rayk’s thoughts raced. His company was under attack. He had seen the enemy, seen their uniforms- PDF troopers. Resistance fighters. Planetary Defense.   
  
Soldiers. Only soldiers. Soldiers, he could handle.   
  
Soldiers using lasweapons, firing red bolts.   
  
So where…?  
  
The darkness howled a warning, and Rayk threw himself flat. A second later, a beam of golden light seared down the alley and annihilated his risen ghoul in a cloud of cinders.   
  
Rayk looked up.   
  
Standing in the street was a woman in golden armor, worn but still gleaming, holding a forked spear in her hand. Wings of white light shimmered at her back, hazy, immaterial. There was a badge at her breast.   
  
The sigil caught the light and struck Rayk like a slap to the face.   
  
A crescent. An orb. Three diamonds.   
  
The Order. The Order  _Elite_.   
  
“Valkyrie,” Rayk whispered, in mounting terror, as the cost of his own hubris became painfully clear.  
  
~*~  
  
Aranea Stillwind stalked the streets of Hawk’s Landing, concealed from view by the optic camouflage in her suit. Tiny photoreceptive panels, embedded in her armor, projected the image of her surroundings. She prowled through Hawk’s Landing as a ghost, a blur of heat haze.   
  
The bulk of her forces were at the train station, preparing to ferry the next load of proselytes to the Ministry. The others were sweeping the city, taking captives and shooting the rest.   
  
Bloodletter Alatar Rayk was leading the search. Even though she technically outranked him, everyone knew the sorcerer was the one in charge. She wasn’t here to lead. She was only here as a failsafe. A secret weapon, only unveiled if it was needed.  
  
That arrangement suited Aranea just fine. She kept watch, invisible, as Rayk’s mob did their dirty work.   
  
She watched, lips pressed into a line, as Rayk’s troops dragged more prisoners out for conversion.   
  
This was for their own good, surely? Better to submit than to die.   
  
Compared to what befell the rest of the planet, being sent to the Ministry was a mercy.   
  
Aranea folded her arms across her chest, pensive. The mark of Malice, branding her as its servant, burned on her cheek. The unholy sigil coiled and writhed, like a worm under her skin.   
  
It itched. She mimed scratching it through her helmet, for all the good that would do.   
  
That was when the shooting began.   
  
Aranea watched, unfeeling, as Rayk’s cult fighters were cut down in droves. She didn’t break cover or lift a finger to help. What she did was choose a perch next to a rooftop curiously ablaze with violet flame. She pulled her rifle off her back, settled it in against her cheek, and watched through her scope as the battle unfolded.   
  
She knew better than to show her hand early. Besides, this was the sorcerer’s show, wasn’t it? He could handle it himself, if he was even remotely competent, and if he wasn’t, the Ministry was better off without him.   
  
These were soldiers. Just soldiers. Nothing Rayk couldn’t handle.   
  
That was until she saw her.   
  
It was like something out of a dream, out of the heroic sagas of old. A woman, clad in white and gold, clutching a spear in her hands. Radiant. Beautiful.   
  
Aranea would be lying if she said she wasn’t intrigued.   
  
“Overseer!” Rayk screamed.   
  
Pity, Aranea thought. Pity to destroy something so lovely.   
  
She leaned in and took the shot.   
  
~*~  
  
The valkyrie loomed over Rayk, leveling her spear at his throat. With a flick of a switch, the forked blades slid back, revealing a barrel built into the haft of the spear. Golden energy gathered, sparking between the tines.  
  
A shot rang out. A high-powered kinetic round struck the valkyrie in the shoulder, shattering her left pauldron and throwing her off balance. Her lance beam went wide, scorching a furrow of boiling mud down the yard.   
  
Rayk spoke a word in some unholy language. A wave of invisible force slammed into the valkyrie like a main battle tank. She staggered backwards into the street, but the joints of her armor locked into place and she stood her ground.   
  
Rayk scrambled to his feet, as Tarik placed his mighty bulk between the Bloodletter and their formidable adversary. His autocannon roared.   
  
The storm of shells hammered against the valkyrie’s heavy armor like hail off a tin roof, nicking, scraping, denting. Heedless of the punishing gunfire, she dashed forward, brandishing her spear.   
  
The energized blade spun expertly in her hand, scything through Tarik's autocannon like wheat. She smashed the weapon aside, exploding it in a hail of shrapnel and stray shells, cracking Tarik in the face with the butt of her spear on her backswing. The brute staggered back, blood dribbling from a broken nose.   
  
A second shot rang out, this one aimed for the spine. The valkyrie swiveled at the sound, and the high-velocity round instead sliced a gouge down her thigh plate. She fell to one knee.   
  
In the moment’s distraction, Tarik escaped, Bloodletter Rayk bundled under his arm like firewood.   
  
The valkyrie lifted her head, turning her gaze to the rooftops…  
  
~*~  
  
Aranea swore. Twice now she’s fumbled what should have been killing shots. What was wrong with her today?   
  
She ducked down under the lip of the roof, ejecting her spent shell and slotting in another. The mark of Malice twitched and burned under her skin.   
  
She rose, preparing to take a third shot. Something caught the light in her scope.   
  
A crest. A crescent, an orb, and three diamonds.   
  
She flinched at the Order’s sigil, at the sign of the enemy, the mark on her cheek chafing and itching with hatred.   
  
She was only distracted for a moment.   
  
The beam of golden plasma lanced across the roof. She jerked backwards, sliding down the tiles until she toppled over the edge. She landed on her feet behind the house. Her rifle, its barrel fused and ruined by the heat of the near-miss, landed in the dirt beside her.   
  
She scowled. Her enemy was a tenacious one.   
  
But she still had some tricks up her sleeve.   
  
The valkyrie stood alone in the square, surrounded by the dead and dying. Gunfire still sounded from neighboring streets, but here, it was quiet. A deceptive quiet, she knew.   
  
Something moved in her peripheral vision, something too fast for her to see.  
  
A ghost.   
  
Aranea came up behind the valkyrie, and drove a pair of daggers into her neck. She reflexively jerked forward, and Aranea’s strike missed its mark, her blades carving an X down the woman’s back in a shriek of metal.   
  
The valkyrie drove one boot behind her, kicking away her attacker. She whirled around, spear at the ready, but her foe had vanished.   
  
The assassin came at her again, knives shrieking against ceramite plate, hunting for cracks, joints, seals. She came at her, like a blur, like heat haze, all-but-invisible in the filthy, false sunlight of the Rift shining above.   
  
But the valkyrie still had the advantage. Of armor, and of range.   
  
She spun her spear around her, the energized blade humming and singing through the air. Aranea dove out of its reach, circling around her prey, waiting for an opening, waiting for her chance. But the valkyrie kept whirling her spear around, denying her entry.   
  
Almost like a dance, Aranea thought.   
  
On the fourth spin, the valkyrie dipped her blade and cut a circle into the ground, spraying the area around her with hot mud.   
  
Aranea blinked as the mud adhered to the contours of her suit, spoiling her camouflage. An instant later, she was incinerated in a cone of golden light.   
  
The blast slammed her onto the ground, skipping her across the cobblestone street like a rock on a pond. She looked up. An magical glyph was fading from the air around the valkyrie’s outstretched palm.   
  
Not a lance blast. That beam of searing plasma would have killed her outright. A spell. Divine power.   
  
An Act of Faith.   
  
Aranea rose to her hands and knees, her armor scorched and smouldering. The photoreceptive scales powering her optic camouflage had been burned away. They flickered and hissed, dead pixels on her prone form.   
  
She waited for the valkyrie to finish her. To execute her.   
  
It didn’t come. The valkyrie planted the haft of her spear on the ground, leaning on it for support.   
  
It gave Aranea the strangest sense of satisfaction to see that her foe was equally out of breath.   
  
The valkyrie raised a hand to her ear, as if receiving a call. She locked eyes with Aranea for a brief moment, hidden behind their helms.   
  
She spread her wings and flew away, and Aranea couldn’t- or wouldn’t- stop her.   
  
The gunfire in neighboring streets became more sporadic, then ceased entirely. The battle was over. Aranea couldn’t tell if they won or not.   
  
She was still alive, and that was what mattered. That woman should have killed her, but here she was.   
  
The thought caught in her mind like a fishhook. The mark of Malice twitched under her skin.   
  
Surviving cult fighters were picking themselves up and gathering to her in the street. One of them moved to help her up. She glowered at him from beneath her helm, getting to her feet on her own.   
  
“Overseer,” Tarik said, bowing. He emerged from an alleyway with Rayk in tow.   
  
“They’re gone,” Rayk reported, not meeting Aranea’s eyes. “Made off with a number of our captives. Not that it matters. There will always be more.”  
  
“You there,” Aranea said, nodding in Tarik's direction. “Take whatever’s left of this batch to the train station.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
Aranea turned to the sorcerer. He was staring at the ground.   
  
“Pick your head up,” she snapped. “We have to make a call.”  
  
~*~  
  
Three weeks ago, there was a monastery on the bluffs by Whitechapel, facing the sea. It was home to a humble religious order that tended the lighthouse and, despite their proximity to such a large city, they spent their days in peaceful seclusion.  
  
Three weeks ago, the Rift tore open the sky above Corinth, and the forces of Malice spilled through.   
  
That cloister was invaded, and defiled, and now the lighthouse shines only a beacon of fetid green light, a counterpoint to the acid yellow of the Rift above.   
  
Three weeks ago, this wasn’t the Ministry.   
  
The religious capital of the Malefic occupation, seat of Jei, the Dark Apostle. Jei was the Aspect of Dogma, a hierarch of Malice, and commander of its forces.   
  
Unfortunately, Jei had little patience for command. Jei had no strategic mind, no charisma, no force or verve. He was a killer, a peerless fighter, and if it were up to him, he’d be on the frontlines, personally hunting down whatever scraps of resistance remained.   
  
This is why the Dark Apostle was absent from the Ministry, and why its stewardship was left in the hands of Father Erebus, Master of the Faith.   
  
Erebus was in his office, flicking through dataslates. Reams of data scrolled down the multiple screens set into his desk, but this was data of little importance. A week ago, maybe two, and those reports would have his full attention. But the battle to take Corinth was already won, and he didn’t care overmuch about what skirmishes remained.  
  
“Poetic,” he muttered aloud, to no one in particular. His aide, a robed acolyte named Lyse, glanced at him.   
  
“My lord?”  
  
“Isn’t it poetic, Lyse?” Erebus said, rising from his seat. He paced around the room, his hands behind his back. “Here we are, in the gutted and brutalized corpse of the heathen faith this planet once had. And it is here, of all places, where we choose to plant our flag, to make our home, our pulpit. Our Ministry. Like a soldier standing triumphant, with his boot on the enemy’s face. Fitting, isn’t it, Lyse?”   
  
“Yes, my lord.”  
  
“Jei would not agree,” Erebus scowled. “The Apostle has no mind for poetry, or tactics, or organization. The Apostle would rather take up his spear and fight this entire godsdamned war on his own.”  
  
Lyse shifted uncomfortably. “I… dare not speak ill of the Apostle, lord.”  
  
Erebus chuckled.   
  
“Why not? What would he do, kill you?” Erebus smiled- a venomous, dangerous smile. “We both know there are worse things.”  
  
Lyse swallowed, grateful when a notice came in over the comm.   
  
“…My lord,” she said, eager for the reprieve. “You have an incoming litho-cast from Overseer Stillwind.”  
  
“Thank you, Lyse,” Erebus smiled affably. “I’ll take it now.”  
  
Erebus stepped forward onto a stage set into the floor. Before him, the sleek, armored figure of Aranea Stillwind constructed itself in solid light.   
  
“My lord Erebus,” she said. There was no crackle of vox-static, no time-delay. The hololith in her image spoke as if she were there.   
  
“Overseer,” Erebus began pleasantly. “You seem… disheveled.”  
  
Aranea stiffened, conscious of the extensive damage to her armor.   
  
“The delivery out of Hawk’s Landing will be delayed. Bloodletter Rayk sends his apologies.”   
  
Aranea’s image disappeared, stepping out of the caster. A hololith of Rayk reluctantly took her place.   
  
“I deeply apologize for this delay, my lord,” Rayk said, bowing his head low. “We encountered… resistance.”  
  
“What is the status of the delivery now?” Erebus asked mildly.   
  
Rayk glanced to someone, presumably Aranea, outside of casting range. He turned back to Erebus.   
  
“The delivery is proceeding now, lord. It will be with you without any further delay.”  
  
“Good,” Erebus said with a shrug, abruptly ending the transmission.   
  
Silence returned to the chamber. Lyse fidgeted by the door.   
  
“Late for service,” Erebus tutted, shaking his head. “Never a good showing. It speaks to poor character. A lack of eagerness. Of… conviction.”   
  
He turned to Lyse, who shivered as his gaze fell upon her.   
  
“Prepare,” Erebus said, in a voice bereft of light, his easygoing manner vanishing into grim conviction. “Tonight’s service will be starting soon.”  
  
~*~  
  
Corinth was an agri-world, its cities separated by vast stretches of farmland. These cities were linked by magrails, allowing elevated trains passage across such distances.   
  
The maglev station at Hawk’s Landing was under Malefic control. Occupation forces were herding captured civilians onto the train, each prisoner wearing a ceremonial white hood in preparation for their baptism into the Faith.   
  
Rayk’s company was the last to arrive, coming all but empty-handed. They muttered muted greetings to their fellow cult fighters, handing off their captives for processing.   
  
Aranea couldn’t shake the thought of the valkyrie from her mind. The brand on her cheek itched.   
  
“This batch is ready to go,” an acolyte reported from the platform. Aranea nodded, her thoughts elsewhere.   
  
She paced across the platform, watched by the dark eyes of a dozen captives. She glared at them through the darkness of her helm.   
  
Don’t they realize the gift they’ve been given?   
  
The air cracks with the sound of gunfire. An acolyte topples off the platform and onto the tracks.   
  
Lasbolts fill the air. Cult fighters bark out orders, readying their weapons. Behind her, Aranea hears the captives crying out, peering out the windows, their voices muffled against the cacophony of battle.   
  
“It’s the Resistance!” She hears someone cry. She turns to Rayk and scowls.   
  
“Master Erebus will have no more delays,” she snaps. “Handle this!”  
  
Aranea steps onto the last car and slides the door shut. The train hums as it departs along the frictionless rail, accelerating down the track.   
  
Bloodletter Rayk strides down the platform and into the madness, some cult fighters dropping into cover around him, others merely dropping. He grimaces, closing his beringed fingers around the wrapped wire hilt of the ritual athame at his belt. Arcane power crackles around him like a cloud of static, his shadow flickering and jumping like a bad film reel.   
  
“I need a volunteer,” he growls. “Right now!”  
  
Tarik, lacking a weapon, is first at his side. He meets the Bloodletter’s eyes and nods.   
  
“I give thee unto the Abyss,” Rayk recites, the athame glowing with a vivid red light. “I burn thee, as a torchflame, to light thine way into the long dark…”  
  
“For I belong to the Abyss,” Tarik says, falling to his knees as Rayk circles behind, “when my soul sleeps and my body burns.”  
  
Rayk places the edge of the ritual knife against Tarik's throat.   
  
“Now burn,” Rayk says, reverently, and swipes the blade aside.   
  
The athame slits Tarik's throat with a sound not at all like flesh being cut. It is a horrific, screeching, wailing sound, like talons on glass.   
  
The cult fighter’s body twitches and writhes, convulsing, as a geyser of blood erupts from his throat. As it gushes into the air, it melts, it bubbles, it  _transforms_ \- until Tarik's body is twisted, inverted, and vomited back out through the crack in reality torn open at his throat.   
  
A creature, wreathed in fog and flame, coalesces out of the pillar of smoke. Teeth and bone reassemble themselves with grisly cracks, flesh is pulled taut or left to sag.   
  
It is a horror, an abomination, crafted of snapping limbs and twitching mandibles, a nightmare only tenuously confined by the remnants of Tarik's shape.   
  
_Daemon_.   
  
Rayk smiles grimly as terror grips his foes. He watches how frantically the pattern of the fight changes, how every weapon the Resistance has to offer is pulled away from his cult troops and retrained on the monster in Tarik's flesh.   
  
Once-Tarik roared, a thunderous sound echoed by a thousand wailing voices, heedless of the hail of lasbolts rippling across its unearthly form. Rayk spoke a word in the Old Tongue, blood dribbling down his lips, and the daemon dove into the storm of gunfire, drinking it in like rain.  
  
~*~  
  
Aranea exhaled. The train hummed as it zipped along the track. The inertial dampeners made the train car so still you’d scarcely even know it was moving.   
  
She was in the last car. Empty. The handful of stragglers Rayk’s company could gather were placed in the next car up. She made her way towards the door.   
  
She stopped. The door behind her opened, then closed. A slight breeze entered the cabin.   
  
“Come to finish me, then?” Aranea asked, without turning around.   
  
The valkyrie stepped forward, spear under her arm. Her wings, ribbons of light, receded into her shoulders and vanished.   
  
“I’m not here for you,” she said, crackling through her helmet vox. “I’m here for them.”  
  
Aranea swallowed hard. Her brand throbbed.   
  
“…So be it.”  
  
She whirled around, firing the flechette blasters mounted in her gauntlets. The valkyrie staggered backwards, the slivers of sharpened metal biting and lodging into her armor. She winced as two spines dug into her exposed left shoulder, blood beading around the cracks in the plate.  
  
Aranea darted forward, seeking to press her advantage, but the valkyrie brought her spear around in a wide arc. She ducked beneath the blade, but the haft caught her on the backswing, smashing into her helm with enough force to crack it.   
  
Aranea dropped prone, then swept the valkyrie’s legs out from under her. She fell, her grip on her spear faltering. In one smooth motion, Aranea drew her dagger, slicing up the valkyrie’s forearm and across her chest. The blade shrieked as it scraped against the plate-   
  
And then the crest of the Order caught the light.   
  
Aranea cried out sharply and recoiled, the symbol seizing in her mind. She staggered backwards, the valkyrie’s spear in one hand, the other clutching her head.   
  
A cacophony of conflicting voices spilled into her mind. She stumbled back into the space between train cars, teetering precariously off the rail. The valkyrie darted forward, catching her arm and pulling her back before she toppled over.   
  
Aranea flinched at the touch, and planted her dagger in the valkyrie’s chest.   
  
The blade deflected off her badge and plunged into her damaged pauldron, burying itself in the meat of her left shoulder. The valkyrie gasped in pain, leaning back against the doorframe. The wound was only the last of a dozen other hurts- but those wounds took their toll. She sagged against the door, falling to her knees, too spent to fight any more.   
  
Aranea was dizzy. The world spun around her head. She needed air. She unclasped the seals of her cracked helm and threw it aside. Her brand, now exposed, ached and throbbed.   
  
“Well fought,” the valkyrie rasped. Aranea swore she was smiling.   
  
“Why? Why are you doing this?” Aranea said, fighting to be heard over the wind. “It doesn’t make any sense. Your world belongs to us now. Corinth is beaten! Conquered!”  
  
“Corinth resists,” she replied.   
  
“Why?!” Aranea demanded. “Why defy them? You know the consequences. None of this had to happen! None of you had to die!”  
  
“What is your name?”  
  
The question shocks her. Aranea works her jaw, muttering.   
  
“…Aranea Stillwind.”  
  
“And how long have you served them, Aranea?”  
  
The question burns. The valkyrie’s voice, and the use of her name… it scorches like an accusation. Anger wells up in her, anger she doesn’t understand. Aranea balls her fists. She doesn’t know what to say.   
  
Instead, she brandishes the spear.   
  
The valkyrie, heedless of having her own spear leveled at her throat, reaches up and plucks the dagger out of her shoulder. She tosses it across the divider.   
  
“…I imagine you want that back,” she mutters. There is a smile in her voice that makes Aranea’s blood boil.   
  
“Why?” Aranea asks through gritted teeth. “Why aren’t you afraid to die?”  
  
The valkyrie lifts her head high, her voice filled with quiet conviction.   
  
“Because there are worse things than death here,” she says. “Aren’t there?”  
  
Aranea’s eyes go wide. Her brand twitches. The spear trembles in her hands.   
  
She lets out a furious cry and slams the spear into the divider.   
  
The last car detaches, slowly falling behind on the track. The valkyrie watches Aranea step inside the next car and slam the door shut behind her.  
  
~*~  
  
The board is set. The pieces are moving.   
  
The trains arrive. The congregation gathers. By the hundreds. By the thousands.   
  
While many are content to bask in the eldritch glow of the Ministry beacon, the limited space of the cloister itself is reserved for that evening’s special guests. The delivery from Hawk’s Landing has arrived, and they take their seats as guests of honour. They are here to be ‘processed’, but that is an evasive term.   
  
They are here to be converted.   
  
They are here to join the Faith.   
  
The hosts of Malice, cult-warriors and acolytes ring the Ministry in their thousands, chanting out hymns in a language so foul it makes lips bleed. Despite this, the innermost areas of the Ministry are sheltered from the noise. The only sound is the otherworldly keening of the beacon atop the lighthouse, pulsating green, storm clouds spiraling above.   
  
At the base of the lighthouse, in the shelter of the Ministry’s cloister courtyard, Father Erebus, Master of the Faith, rises to the pulpit and begins his sermon.   
  
“Welcome, filth,” he begins, in a voice that makes the crowd shudder in their seats. “Welcome to your atonement. For tonight is the night you may wash yourselves of the stink of the heathen gods who abandoned you in your hour of need, and embrace the fullness of the Outer Dark.”  
  
Aranea sat against a pillar in the cloister, hugging her knees to her chest like a child. The valkyrie’s spear sat beside her on the tile. It was a glorious trophy. It had won her awe and glowing praise from many since her return to the Ministry.   
  
Her brand burned. It twitched and nagged at her skin, as if it would burst out from beneath her flesh and exult in the presence of the Master.   
  
She’d had no word from Bloodletter Rayk. It was strange, but she almost missed him. She wanted to talk to somebody. Somebody who wasn’t a dead-eyed ghoul or a cult zealot high on combat stims.   
  
There were reports that he had unleashed a daemon at the Hawk’s Landing maglev station, to put down the Resistance there. The thought of it left a sour taste in Aranea’s mouth. To call upon their deities, just to stamp out a few rebels.   
  
Unless…  
  
Unless the Resistance was just that strong.   
  
But nothing could defeat a daemon, surely?   
  
Aranea frowned, idly picking at her scorched armor. What was that power? What was that light? If that woman could call upon gods of her own-  
  
No. No. Corinth was theirs. They had won the battle. Their might was proven. Their cause was proven.   
  
Right?  
  
Aranea glanced up. Father Erebus had turned around, his arms raised in a V, beseeching the roiling green flame at the top of the lighthouse. The light, the air- it all hung strangely around the tower, shadows flickering and making shapes, making hands.   
  
“And now I call upon thee, O kings of the abyss, reach out your hands. Lay your talons upon your people, and brand thee as your children, so that we may serve in Your name- until our souls sleep and our bodies burn!”  
  
The gathered proselytes cried out in fear and alarm. Lightning struck, called down from the beacon atop the lighthouse, flashing across the congregation. Voices shrieked in the Rift, cackling as they laid claim to their newest followers.   
  
A woman screamed as a flash of lightning burned the mark of Malice into her face. Aranea’s brand flared in sympathy. She clutched her face, gasping, the mark writhing beneath her hand.   
  
Aranea got to her feet, the valkyrie’s spear in her hand. Her head was ringing. She could feel… something.   
  
She lifted her head, unsteady on her feet.   
  
That sound.   
  
What was that sound?   
  
~*~  
  
In the valley below the Ministry, in the fields surrounding Whitechapel, ghosts gathered in the night. The Ministry was the Enemy’s primary base of operations for this region. It was home to several high-ranking officials, for both military and government posts. It was rumored, even, that Jei, the Dark Apostle himself, would be there.   
  
And on the night of a conversion service, they will have gathered a crowd from miles around.   
  
The Resistance would never get an opportunity like this again.   
  
Colonel Ferris, Planetary Defense, had been waiting for a night like this. The Enemy was so smug; so sure of their victory. A planet of hicks and farmers, of course they could conquer it in only three weeks. And then, to have the audacity not even to use it for food. The Enemy wasn’t here to steal Corinth’s grain- it was here to steal its people, to swell the ranks of Dogma, and all those who fell in the fighting would rise and serve again as ghouls.   
  
They thought this would be an easy fight.   
  
He’d make them choke on those words.   
  
He looked up at the sky, filled with smoke and ash, poisoned by the false sunlight of the Rift and the fetid green of the Ministry beacon.   
  
The unholy suns made him sick to his stomach.   
  
Good thing only one of them would survive the night.   
  
He watched, and waited. Lightning began to lash out of the sickly green Ministry beacon. He heard screams and chanting in a language that made him dizzy.   
  
A solitary red flare rose up above the bluffs at Whitechapel and then fell like a star across the plains.   
  
The Resistance surged through the valley like a tidal wave, Colonel Ferris leading the charge.   
  
“Corinth resists!” He screamed. “Corinth resists!”  
  
~*~  
  
Whistling.   
  
It was whistling, Aranea realized, as she wandered away from the inner cloister.   
  
There was some kind of commotion outside. It sounded like-  
  
Whistling.   
  
Aranea looked up at the rocket that flew above her. It sailed above the heads of her and four thousand cult fighters, including Father Erebus, the Master of the Faith.   
  
Stray or intentional, lucky or not, the rocket flew into the ghastly green light of the beacon atop the Ministry lighthouse.  
  
Then, all hell broke loose.  
  
~*~  
  
The Resistance’s assault on the Ministry was proceeding well- suspiciously well, almost too good to be true. For twenty minutes, former PDF troopers and trained civilians pushed their attack and gave everything they had, astonishing the cult forces that stood in their way.   
  
Then, a rocket struck the beacon atop the Ministry lighthouse, and the air filled with a thunderous, wailing shriek.   
  
Ghastly green light bled from the lighthouse tower, lightning spearing into the sky wildly, as if the tower itself was thrashing in pain and swiping madly at whoever had hurt it. The spiraling storm clouds gathered above the tower now became a vortex, lit from within by that furious, fetid green.   
  
Arcane energies flared throughout the area and shook the ground. Acidic green light bled across the landscape. Daemons howled in the mist.   
  
The forces of Malice broke and fled before the wrath of their gods. The Resistance, astonished at their fortune, mowed them down in droves- until they, too, realized that this place was no longer safe.   
  
The valkyrie had been part of the vanguard, tasked with seeking out high-priority targets in the inner cloister. Now that the beacon was flaring uncontrollably, dark magic palpable in the air, nobody knew what to do, except run.   
  
She landed, shaky, her wings disappearing into her shoulders. The cloister was in chaos. Everyone was running. Captive neophytes strained at their bonds.   
  
She immediately realized the foolishness of her coming here. Foul sorcery was raging above her, out of anyone’s control. The only thing left to do was flee.   
  
Some cult fighters guarding the inner cloister didn’t get that memo. They howled out curses and foul hymns, rushing her with ritual knives raised high. She brought her borrowed PDF-issue lasrifle up to her cheek, cutting them down with tight, aimed bursts. The weapon felt clumsy and unfamiliar in her hands.   
  
The valkyrie lifted her rifle and felt it kick against her shoulder, dropping a pair of cult fighters face-down in the mud. A third lost his leg at the knee and toppled, firing a stolen assault rifle uselessly into the air. A fourth got shot in the throat as he was arming a grenade. It fell at his feet and pulverized him as he died, throwing him and two of his fellows into the air.   
  
A fifth snarled behind her and raised a blood-wet machete in a two handed chop. She twisted out of the blow, the strike grazing her wounded shoulder. She cried out in pain, distracted for a crucial moment. The cultist raised the blade-  
  
-and died, impaled from behind.   
  
Aranea dropped the cult fighter’s corpse on the ground, stepping on him to dislodge the spearhead. She raised the lance towards the valkyrie.   
  
The valkyrie stiffened, raising her rifle.   
  
Aranea exhaled, before throwing the spear at the valkyrie’s feet. It stuck, blade-first, in the dirt.   
  
“I imagine you want that back,” she said, almost managing a smile.   
  
Aranea’s eyes went wide. She gagged, twitching, as black lightning speared into her from behind. She crumpled to the ground, whimpering.   
  
“ _I don’t like the effect you have on my people_ ,” snarled Erebus, Master of the Faith.  
  
The valkyrie shouldered her rifle and fired. The full-auto burst flashed off Erebus’ barrier. He pounced on her, his form wreathed in smoke, one hand pinning her gun arm, the other closed around her throat.   
  
“A champion of a heathen faith,” Erebus snarled, his form blurring, changing, between something human and something beyond. “I can think of worse trophies.”  
  
He lifted her up, rising on a pillar of black smoke. Tendrils of darkness snaked out of his sleeve and undid the seals of her helm. It fell away with a hiss, as he turned her face towards the beacon.   
  
“ _I claim thee_ ,” Erebus said, his voice echoing with the howling vortex of daemonic choirs spiraling above, “ _in the name of the Abyss! Until your soul sleeps, and your body **burns**!_”  
  
“Now burn,” Aranea snarls, as she throws the knife.   
  
The knife, still wet with the blood of an Angel, sails through the air. It passes unobstructed through Erebus’ personal shield, not moving fast enough to trigger the kinetic barrier. It strikes at an angle, severing the spine, and puncturing a lung.   
  
Aranea doesn’t miss.   
  
He drops the valkyrie unceremoniously onto the courtyard, his mouth open, speechless, groping at his chest with numb fingers. The Vortex above him roils and roars, the chaotic power within raging out of control.   
  
The valkyrie plucks her spear out of the ground and runs a hand along the blade, glyphs appearing in the air. The blade begins to shine a brilliant white, lighting up the fetid green and acid yellow night.   
  
“I rebuke thee, daemon,” she says, her voice firm against the maelstrom. The light spreads from the blade, spreading down the haft like molten silver.  
  
“I cast you into the Abyss, and when you return,  _tell your masters just who it was who **threw you back**!_”  
  
She hurls the spear, splitting the sky like a thunderbolt. It strikes Erebus in the heart, forming a cross with Aranea’s knife, and keeps going, carrying the Master of the Faith to the summit of the Ministry beacon.   
  
There is a sound, like the chime of a bell, and in an instant, the Ministry, Whitechapel, and all its surrounding provinces, erupt and go ablaze with light.   
  
It is an explosion unlike anything caused by conventional weapons, unlike anything anyone has ever seen. The blast annihilates the lighthouse at Whitechapel Bluffs, leaving only a ghostly white light, like a star, or an after-image, hanging in the air where the beacon once stood.   
  
The forces of Malice guarding and staffing the Ministry turn to rout. They flee in a blind panic, and the Resistance cuts them down. Entire legions of ghouls, bereft of their masters, cease fighting. They exhale a plume of black smoke, lay down, and die.   
  
The explosion obliterates the vortex swirling above the lighthouse and the daemons it carried within, scattering the storm clouds back across the sea. And, though the sky is still polluted with the acrid light of the Rift, for the first time in three weeks, the people of Corinth can see the stars.   
  
Colonel Ferris’ company bursts into the inner cloister, weapons raised, expecting a last stand by the enemy elite. Instead, he finds several hundred captive citizens of Hawk’s Landing, their hands bound, some wailing, others crying, still others praying feverishly under their breaths.   
  
Aranea gasps awake, grimacing at the sharp pain in her back. She cannot feel her brand anymore. The unholy sigil drips off her cheek like a cheap tattoo. It drips onto the ground, sizzles, and is gone.   
  
She is in pain. And she is not alone.   
  
The valkyrie is sitting above her. Even exhausted, she looks beautiful, serene. The gentle light of her miracle pervades the air.   
  
Her miracle. The word sits uneasily on her tongue.   
  
But what else could it have been?   
  
The valkyrie is examining the wound on Aranea’s back- or the wound that should have been. Erebus’ black lightning left no physical scar. This was a metaphysical wound; a soul wound. A wound that human medicine was not equipped to treat.   
  
Colonel Ferris sent his troops to begin releasing the captive neophytes, many of them still bawling at the prospect of their forced conversion. He paused beside the angel and the unfamiliar woman on the ground.   
  
“My lady,” he said. “My lady, do you need a medicae?”  
  
“No,” she shook her head. “But she does.”   
  
The colonel shouted for corpsmen to come forward, but she held up a hand.   
  
“No, no. This is not something you are trained to handle. I’ll take care of this personally.”   
  
The colonel nodded.   
  
“Secure the city, colonel. Make Whitechapel a place we can defend. If the Enemy tries to retake this city, we’ll make them bleed for it.”  
  
“Aye, my lady. Corinth resists.”  
  
The colonel saluted, and got to work. The angel and Aranea had this corner of the cloister more or less to themselves.   
  
“I’m going to get you out of here,” she said quietly. “I’m going to get us somewhere safe. I’m going to look at what that sorcerer did to you. And then…”  
  
The angel took a deep breath and sighed.   
  
“…Then, we’ll talk.”  
  
Aranea shivered. Black lightning suffused her form. Her muscles twitched and burned.   
  
“What…” She exhaled. “…what is your name?”  
  
The question catches the angel off guard. She is not prepared for the memories they bring up. Memories of working the fields, of a day’s worth of honest toil for a good supper and a warm bed. Then, three weeks ago, when the sky fell in, and chaos reigned upon Corinth. The day she put on her old armor, and took the spear down from her mantel.  
  
It wasn’t a life she was eager to get back to. All the fighting. All the pain. Though retired, she doesn’t look a day over 40. And one doesn’t simply stop being a Valkyria, the Order Elite.  
  
Corinth has a very low magical population. One in a million. They were simple, honest folk, mostly unaware of the wider galaxy. They got few foreigners, and even fewer Angels.   
  
When she told them where she was from, they said Elysium wasn’t a planet they’d ever heard of.   
  
But the name endured.   
  
She lifts Aranea in her arms, one around her back, the other beneath her knees. She examines the place on her cheek where the brand had once been. Their eyes meet- one second. Two.   
  
“They call me Elise,” the angel says. She spreads her wings, and flies.  
  
~*~

 


End file.
